Last week I reviewed FREAKSHOW, the novel by Jacquin Sanders recently reprinted by Black Gat Books. As I sometimes do when I remember, I copied the review over onto Amazon and submitted it. It didn’t show up on FREAKSHOW’s page, which came as no surprise. About half the time when I submit a review to Amazon, it never appears, as if I had sent it into a black hole.
However, this time I actually got a response from Amazon, saying that they
couldn’t publish my review because it didn’t meet their guidelines for one or
more of these reasons:
Profanity
Harassment
Hate speech
Sexual content
Illegal activity
Private information
Of course, they didn’t tell me which of those things they found in the review.
Personally, I don’t think the review contains any of those things, but you can
read it for yourself, if you haven’t already, and see what you think.
Amazon also invited me to edit my review and resubmit it. I don’t think I’ll be
doing that. If you’d like to pick up a copy of FREAKSHOW (it’s a very good
novel), you can buy it directly from the good folks at Stark House Press/Black
Gat Books.
10 comments:
maybe the word "slutty." Egads
They probably didn't like the word "freak," even though it's in the title of the book. Amazon has an extremely stupid and arbitrary algorithm.
They recently put me "on notice" because I gave a negative review to a book by an author who is a notorious fit-pitcher when he gets a bad review. They (on his prompting, I'm certain) claimed "harassment" there, even though all I said was "_________ isn't a very good writer" and gave examples why. I wrote Amazon back and told 'em if I couldn't review things honestly, I wouldn't review them at all, so I won't be helping them out anymore. It's pretty hard to trust reviews on Amazon anymore, anyway, since most of them are put up by "influencers" who are on a publicist's payroll these days. Writing Amazon reviews is now a career some folks have.
Anyway, it's strange, but I'm sure it's nothing you did, because I don't see anything wrong with your review. It was great, as usual. If they don't like it, it's their loss!
Yeah, "slutty" was the only thing I noticed too, so fuck Amazon.
Despite what I said in the post, I got curious enough to edit and resubmit the post. I took out "slutty", "young", and "freaks" just to cover all the bases. We'll see what happens.
And I can't stop thinking about how I ought to write a book called SLUTTY YOUNG FREAKS and try to self-publish it on Amazon . . .
Resubmit the review, I should have said.
People actually read book reviews on Amazon? Shocking. What's next, Goodreads? Neither of them are anything like honest about anything under twenty years old. It's mostly influencers and sock puppets.
For writers, the real value of reviews on Amazon is that the more of them a book has, the more likely Amazon will be to promote it. Also, you have to have a minimum number of reviews in order to buy certain ads, I believe.
James, if you write SLUTTY YOUNG FREAKS, I will buy it.
Amazon is increasingly difficult for authors to work with. In addition to all the other problems justifiably raised here, I cannot receive regular payment for ebook reissues because I live in New Zealand. Paper checks are no longer accepted by NZ banks. It's all direct deposit (EFT) and Amazon will not do that to New Zealand, only wire transfer. For this, Amazon says: "Wire transfers have minimum payment thresholds and may be subject to fees associated with receiving wire payments or foreign exchange rates." My solution has involved switching to working through Draft2Digital and Fiction4All who are happy to pay regularly using PayPal, a service Amazon KDP will not entertain.
I think Bill Crider had SLUTTY YOUNG FREAKS in his collection. It starred Claudia Jennings, or maybe Candice Rialson.
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